The other day I was asked a ques­tion I hear all too often: “How do I dis­tin­guish myself from other copywriters?”

To find the answer, look to one of the most effec­tive and fre­quently used copy­writ­ing and mar­ket­ing tools. It’s your “Unique Sell­ing Propo­si­tion,” or USP.

(I pre­fer to call it a “Unique Sell­ing Posi­tion.” If you’ve read my book, “Power Posi­tion­ing,” then you’d know that I’m a big fan of posi­tion­ing rather than prospecting.)

Your USP is also your “hook.”

Time and time again, I’ve told many aspir­ing copy­writ­ers and mar­keters that a USP is what dis­tin­guishes you from the pack. It increases per­ceived value, exper­tise, and cred­i­bil­ity — with­out need­ing to state it outright.

But since I hear this ques­tion often, par­tic­u­larly from copy­writ­ers just enter­ing the field, I sense that it’s because peo­ple need a lit­tle help in defin­ing their USP.

So to help you, here’s a tip.

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Com­pe­ti­tion is a “killer” for a lot of com­mod­ity busi­nesses. Doesn’t really mat­ter whether you mar­ket online or offline. If you sell a com­mod­ity prod­uct then chances are you com­pete for cus­tomers with hun­dreds of other businesses.

In the next few min­utes, I’m going to share with you a proven strat­egy to…

Out-Market, Out-Sell And Out-Profit...

… Just about any­one in your indus­try or busi­ness category.

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With “user-​​driven copy,” the fact is, peo­ple can choose what they want, how they want it and when they want it. And that is what’s work­ing really well right now, not because it’s new but because it’s natural.

The pro­gres­sion of the web (regard­less if you call it Web 2.0 or not) is sim­ply an exten­sion of how peo­ple behave. Busi­nesses and web­sites are finally wak­ing up. And they’re giv­ing their users what they want, ask for and prefer.

Here’s an example.

In Web 1.0, we were lim­ited by text, graph­ics and links. When cook­ies came along, they helped to cus­tomize the user’s expe­ri­ence to a degree. But cook­ies are still lim­it­ing. They are sta­tic in nature, require more pageviews to make them use­ful if at all, and as we all know carry risks such as pri­vacy and secu­rity issues.

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Have you ever picked up a book off the shelf at a local book­store, read the front and back cov­ers, opened it up and, after read­ing a few pages, just couldn’t put it down?

Do you remem­ber, after buy­ing the book, how you flipped each page with an almost excru­ci­at­ing curios­ity because the story was so tan­ta­liz­ing, you became increas­ingly riv­eted to the book with each sub­se­quent chapter?

Copy is, or should be, the same.

Look at it this way: good copy makes a good case. But great copy tells a good story. They say that a great copy­writer is also a great sales­per­son. But all great copy­writ­ers and all great sales­peo­ple also have one thing in common…

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